Beer and Brewing

The highly recommended Rob Percival from Lallemand took us on a fascinating journey through some excellent examples of sour, lambic and, quite definitely, ‘other’ types of beer made with interesting yeasts.

Starting with sours he introduced us to yeasts which acidify then moved on to wild yeasts and blended beers from a completely different brewing culture (pun intended). He ended the, extended, session by presenting us with beers made with non-beer yeasts and, in particular, a grape beer specially shipped over from Italy. The Italians are combining wine and beer in novel ways and making extensive use of yeast. Cloudwater have a similar type of beer fermented with saison, champagne yeasts and Brett. A very complex brewing process producing an interesting and complex beer.

Rob is a true brewers geek, he works for one of the few yeast companies and seems to be involved in a staggering number of projects and beers. It was obvious that he was only skimming the very top of his barrel of knowledge and could have presented for days on a number of different topics. It was quite the education. Lots of excellent, strong beers were drunk so I hope that a decent amount of knowledge was retained.

It will take a lot to top this.

After a lovely dinner as Samsi we headed to Unit 101 for an evening about Lager. Will Evans from Cave Direct North talked a group of us through the history, the present and his thoughts on the future of Lager.Lagers aren’t something that we knew much about, other than how difficult they are to make and that they’ve got a rather chequered image. Will took us through seven different lagers from Pilsners to modern brews from ???. Will was knowledgeable and informative and we learned just how much variation there could be in lagers. Pen was presently surprised but she’s not converted yet.On our table was Marina from Brasserie de la Senne, who was presenting a Belgian beer tasting on the Tuesday, and we had a interesting conversation about Belgian beers and their production.After the session we spoke to the people sat behind us, one of whom worked for Holts and would be at the tour on Friday. It’s a small world. She took a certain amount of offence at some of the comments made by Will and others about the less-than-righteous business practices of some of the larger breweries. As an ex-brewer for a large lager brewery she believed that they have an undeserved bad reputation and made a positive contribution to the brewing industry. We think that this is a very debatable position.

We had not realised we had a brewery near where we live so popped out to this one as they were having an open day for Manchester Beer Week. It’s on an industrial estate which is not ideal, but after driving around the perimeter once we checked their website for instructions. Turns out we had to ring a buzzer at the main gate and a security man let us through.

The kit at the brewery is much the same as many other small breweries. Five guys set it up, but the name Five Kings was not funny. Not entirely sure we like their idea of Four Kings, but each to his own. They all have other jobs or businesses – marketing, plumbing, electrician and joiner being some of their trades/ skills. They brew very traditional beers every couple of weeks or so in spare time and do sell into some local pubs. They are hoping to open a brewery tap in Glossop as well as having regular open days at the bar they have set up in the brewery. Pen had all three beers that were on – a bitter, a dark mild and an IPA. The mild was the best one, but while decent enough beers not really to her taste. They had a South Afrifcan chap doing food – the burrito Mike had was very tasty.

After Heineken we had a few hours to kill. We popped to see our friend Glenn and had a good catch up with him. Then we headed over to Beer Nouveau – no football on today so safe to go round. We missed the last homebrew club meeting so figured Steve might be able to tell us what our mystery ingredient for this years ‘Will it Brew’ competition is. Grits he thinks. We caught up on other things happening in his world and arrangements for the Temperance Street Party and Homebrew expo.

One of our favourite places for an after work chill is Ol Brewery Bar which is in a new shipping container complex on Oxford Road between MMU and UoM. Dave the brewer is a great chap and the two lads that work behind the bar are friendly and knowledgeable and we generally like the atmosphere. They usually have an excellent selection of beers for Pen. We had booked onto their ‘Meet a brewer’ evening which featured two fab chaps from a Croatian brewey called Nova Runda (next round) who had brought 5 of their beers with them. All very hoppy American style beers. They filled us in on what the beer scene is like in their country, info about their brewery etc and Pen of course got to sample all the beers too 🙂  We spent some time chatting to some of the other attendees too including a lovely couple who are into food and beer pairing.

Pic coming as soon as I can get dropbox to accept a photo from my phone……

Last year we somehow totally missed all the hype for Manchester Beer Week and did not see the programme until it was too late. This year we made sure we were organised. So organised we managed to book tickets to look around the Heineken Brewery in Hulme, a well known landmark just south of the city centre. There are only 4 tours of 10 people each happening so we very fairly privileged. This is one of the biggest breweries in Europe and the biggest in the UK. They have 2 other smaller sites in the UK – Caledonia and Tadcaster.

All the staff we met were lovely. Just the day before we had commented that we were unlikely to meet any brewers on this tour, a chemical engineer seemed more likely. Sure enough two graduate chemical engineers who are on the graduate programme guided us around. Actually – we did meet some brewers , a bunch of staff from Cloudwater (recently voted 2nd best brewery in the UK) were on our tour, along with a girl from Beavertown who have just sold a huge chunk of their business to Heineken.

Health and saftety is a big thing – we all had to go through basic security, an induction, wear high vis orange vests and stick to the designated footpaths around the site.

We saw where the ingredients are delivered to big sylos – grain and syrup. The mashing room – two 30m+ long vats with mesh ‘presses’ through which the grain is squeezed (not like our gentle mash tun). Efficiency is apparently better than 100% – something to do with the way the maths works and the standard calculation being wrong (?). Below the mashers the spent grains get collected and like most brewers they sell this on to pig farmers.

We were not able to visit the bolier/copper room – too hot apparently. It was at least 26+C degrees outside in the ‘fresh’ air.

Next we saw the fermenters, from the bottom first. Approximately 15 of them. Each holding 436,000 litres – which you only really start to appreciate once you go outside again, walk across site a bit and look back at them towering into the sky. The yeast is circulated frequently in them. We are curious though about how much they weigh (a few hundred tons) and the amount of pressure at the bottom. Also, we presume they are jacketed and temperature controllable given most of the vessel is exposed to the outside.

On to the filtration room – lots and lots of pipework and large chillers. Some adjuncts can be added at this point. The beer then passes into maturation tanks for about a week.

Packaging – the keg line is very hot and noisy. Kegs come in, get checked for residual beer, washed, refilled. Two canning lines, one of which can fill 1500 cans a minute – how nice it would be if we could do our 40 bottles per batch at hat speed. We also saw the palletiser which stacks the shrink wrapped beers onto pallets and then shrink wraps all of that. Lorry bay close by to take them off to a warehouse where they then get distributed from.

The whole thing appears to be automated and sealed end to end. They have approximately 250 staff and the site operates 24/7 in a shift pattern.

The final bit of the tour was to see their pilot kit. This does not get used to design new recipes – the site does Fosters and Kronenburg most of the time  – but is rather a means of staff engagement so they have some appreciation of how the product is made and what it is (yes, I did giggle while writing that). It is very small, smaller than most micro-breweries we know, and every couple of weeks some of the staff who’ve performed well, been there a few years etc get to spend a day brewing. The beer once bottled is then distributed to the on-site staff.

There was no consumption of alcohol on the premises. We went away with a goody bag of 2 cans of beer, 2 glasses, a couple of bottle openers and some beer mats.